Winter. Success meets a splinter; we are trained to want to win. Only, when I watch crowds rush by, playing the winter game of super shopping and day-glo Clauses, playing to win, I don't want to. When the race is to spend more to prove our humanity, I'm out. The stakes are all wrong, and I wonder if anyone even noticed, recorded, the moment when the mall replaced the community, rending titanic cracks between us for souls to slip between.

I know there is too little compassion, let alone caring. I'll show you. All you have to do is let a little bit slip out, just for a second, and watch how fast it vanishes, is absorbed - there is a vacuum, so little that absence rather than presence defines the condition.

How is it we come to have hearts and all the soft, fleshy trappings of self awareness if we're meant to live like lobsters, things with shells, and never reach outside ourselves? Yet, here we are, each of us in our own self/cocoon. Even a turtle at least sticks it's neck out to make progress. When was the last time you saw someone do that? Did you remember to love them for it? Sometimes, I think that one single act is the most humane, most humane thing we are capable of. It seems so rare, precious like a forgotten shoot under the snow.

It is my fault that I feel the swish of the blade so near my neck so often. It's what I get for leaving it out like that. I forgot for a moment that I was supposed to be playing winter, playing to win.

I won't.